“But he changed,” I said.
Dad shook his head. He wasn’t disagreeing with me. He was denying the world.
“There was a lot that happened back then,” he said. “My brother, Eric, was a good boy. The man he turned into wasn’t the same person.”
“How did it happen?”
Dad swallowed, his eyes fixed on nothing. His palm rubbed across the Bible like he was stroking a cat.
“I don’t talk about this,” Dad said. “But when Eric turned twelve, something happened. He said that he got an angel inside him. And he got where he could do . . . things.”
“ ‘Things’?” I asked.
“Miracles,” Dad said, spitting the word out like it tasted bad. “He got up in trees there wasn’t any way to get up. There was a fight at school. Big fella started swinging at this girl. He must have been fifteen, sixteen, because he had his own car. And she was just a little rabbit of a girl. Eric got between them. I was sure he was going to die, but he whipped that boy. Whipped him. And I swear it, he glowed when he did. Like the sun.”
I looked over at Chogyi Jake. His smile was calm and encouraging. Gentle. His gaze met mine only for a second, but the message in them was clear. Eric had been ridden too.
“I don’t know when Uncle Mike started taking him to the special meetings,” Dad said. “I remember the first time it happened, but I don’t know how old I was. Or he was. Only, Mike would come by and talk to your grandfather, and they’d get a little drunk, and then I’d have to stay home and make sure the old man didn’t get in trouble while Uncle Mike and Eric went off.”
“What was Uncle Mike like?” I asked.
“He was everything my old man wasn’t,” Dad said. “He was smart and funny and he had all the money he needed. Everybody liked him, and he could drink all night and not even get tipsy. There were a couple times he spoke at church, and the way his voice got when he raised his hands to the Lord, you’d have thought he was a prophet.
“I do remember the last time Eric went, though. The last time the two of them were together. Eric was sixteen years old, because I’d just turned fourteen the week before. Eric and Uncle Mike went out the way they would, and didn’t get back before morning. The old man was drunk asleep the same way he always was, but I was scared as hell. They never ran late, and I didn’t know if something had happened. I was scared to call the police because I might get in trouble, and I was scared not to because what if something happened? I thought they wouldn’t get help because I hadn’t called. I told myself that if Eric wasn’t back by the time to go to school, I’d call. Then I just prayed and hoped that it was the right thing.”
Dad lapsed into silence. Jay sat forward, his hands in his lap. I couldn’t read his expression, but it seemed almost as distant as Dad’s, as if he were remembering something too. We had known this man our whole lives, and we hadn’t known him. The flat tone of his voice now, the emptiness in his eyes, all spoke of years of pain so constant that it had stopped being a sensation and turned into an environment.
“He came back,” Dad said. “Sort of, anyway. Uncle Mike drove up and let him out and then drove off again. Eric was bruised all over his body. I mean, all over it. And he looked sick. I stayed home from school and he did too. I tried to take care of him, but he wouldn’t talk. Wouldn’t tell what had happened. He just said that he’d been wrong about the angel. That was all.
“After that, there weren’t any more miracles. It was like he was dead inside. He stopped taking care of me and the old man so much. Stopped going to church and school. I prayed for him. After a while, the old man prayed for him too. That’s how bad it got. We didn’t have much use for all that talk about depression and getting medicated, but we tried it. If it was going to bring Eric back, I think we’d have tried anything. Then the old man and Uncle Mike both died within about four months of each other. Heart attacks, both of them.
“Eric was out on his own by then, and I was working for the Ford dealership, helping build their computer network. Not that I knew much about computers, but I could run wire. And anyway . . .
“He came for the old man’s funeral, and he was back. I thought the first time he was back to his old self. He’d thrown off that whole angel thing and come back up. He laughed and he stood up tall and his face wasn’t gray anymore. I thought he was my brother. I was burying my own father, and it was the happiest I’d been in years because I had my brother back.”
Dad snarled at the memory. Behind him, Ex shifted, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. Upstairs a door opened and then closed. For all my father reacted, it could have been something on a different planet.
“He was different,” Dad said. “I didn’t see it at first, but he was different. He moved back here, started coming to church on a regular basis, just like Uncle Mike used to do. You kids won’t remember it, but your mother and I were struggling for a while there right after Jay was born. Eric came in and paid some of my bills. Wouldn’t let me pay him back either. Said it was the sort of thing brothers did for each other. Your mother was going through some hard times back then too, and he was . . .”
I understood. This was when it had begun with my mother. The secret meetings. The riders. The long, unpleasant affair, if that was what we wanted to call it, that eventually led to me. I wanted to reach out to him, to take his hand. I wanted to comfort him, except I knew where that would lead. Shouting and accusations. Violence that stopped just short of hitting, if not the threat of it.
“There was some stuff happened. Your mother and I had a hard road for a while there. We were tested by God, and neither one of us came out as well as we should have,” Dad said. “And after that, Eric was gone for a while. I didn’t know where. Business, he said. I didn’t have any reason to question it, and there were other things on my mind. Your mother was at church a lot then, and I had my hands full taking care of the two of you.”
“You took care of us?” Jay asked.
“When she was at church,” Dad said. “Someone had to make sure you didn’t just rot in your own piss while she was gone. I mean, there were times that some of the ladies from the outreach committee’d come over and give a hand. But . . . but she was at church a lot. Man takes care of his children, so of course I did.”
Jay shook his head. “I have a hard time picturing you changing diapers.”
“I did what had to be done,” Dad said, his voice sharp and hard with embarrassment. Shame. “Eric came through every couple years after that. Sometimes he’d stay a while. Sometimes just a day or two. Work was steady by then, and I didn’t need his money.”
“What about the last time?” I asked.
Dad put both hands on the tabletop, steadying himself. His head still shook a little, shifting from side to side like the first tremor of palsy. He stared across at the refrigerator like it was an enemy. I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t. It was what I’d come here for, and I needed to know.
“He came by,” I said. “You went to dinner, just the two of you. And when you came back, you told us never to speak to him again. Forbade.”
“Didn’t stop you, though, did it?” he said. “Didn’t keep you from getting all cozy with the bastard. You never respected me. You never followed the rules of my house. You ate my food, you slept in the shelter I provided, and you didn’t listen to a single thing I said. Not a single goddamn thing!”
He slammed both his hands down on the table with a report like a gunshot. His face was flushed again, his eyes wide enough that I could see the whites all the way around. I’d pushed him too far. I’d made him too angry. He couldn’t control himself anymore.
So I had to.
Help me, I thought, and the rider slid into my flesh. I took his wrist in my looped thumb and forefinger, pressing down against the back of his hand with my palm. The fist he’d been starting to form opened a degree, and he yelped.
“This isn’t what we’re going to do,” I said. I did, with my own voice. I didn’t know what the words were going t
o be until I was speaking them, but it wasn’t her. This was all me.
“You don’t order me around,” he said. “I am your father, and you will respect—”
“What did he say? That last time you saw him. Tell me what he said to you.”
Dad pulled his hand back, and I let it pull free of my grip. If I’d wanted to, I could have held him there for hours, and I saw in his expression that he knew it. The shape of his eyes changed to something like a wary respect, and that made me as sad as anything that had happened in the whole miserable trip. I’d shown my father I wasn’t afraid of his violence, and that was what made him respect me. I wanted to leave this place and go home. The irony wasn’t lost.
“He told me that you weren’t my daughter,” Dad said. “He told me that he was your real father, and that the time had come that he’d take the burden of you off my hands. You were his heir the way he’d been Michael’s, and that I didn’t have any right to you. He said he’d make it right with me. That he’d repay me for what he’d . . . done.”
“How?” Chogyi Jake asked. His voice was like a shock of cold water. I’d almost forgotten he was there.
“He had a bag with him,” my father said. “It had . . . there was ten million dollars in it, and he just carried it into the place and put it on the bench next to him like it was nothing.
“I told him my kids were my kids, and I’d see him in hell before I gave up any of you. I told him that my soul wasn’t for sale. He never crossed my threshold again. I thought . . . I thought I’d kept you safe. And I would have if you hadn’t betrayed my trust. Only, now you’re his, aren’t you. You chose his path over God’s. This is your fault. Everything that’s happened has been your fault for breaking the commandments. You are to honor thy father and thy mother. Honor and obey.”
“Yeah,” I said, before I could stop myself. “I’m not supposed to kill either, so I’m falling down on a bunch of scores.”
His mouth closed with a snap. The anger in his face retreated, and he looked me up and down like he was seeing me for the first time. I wondered if confessing to murder would have been an effective way to argue against his no-dating rules too. I was guessing not.
He wasn’t telling me everything. I could feel it. There was something more, and I was willing to bet good money that it had to do with riders and magic and what he meant when he said I was in Eric’s place. At the very least, he had to know about the money. But if he wasn’t telling, I wasn’t sure how to get it out of him.
“Did Eric mention the Invisible College or Randolph Coin?” Chogyi Jake asked, his voice as soft and warm as flannel.
“I didn’t want to hear about his unholy ways,” Dad said. “He wasn’t my brother anymore. And she’s not my daughter.”
It hurt a little less this time, but I can’t say it didn’t sting.
“Did he use the word haugsvarmr?” I asked.
“He didn’t talk about any of that devil worshipping. I wouldn’t let him. He was taken by the devil. My brother was lost to the devil, and I couldn’t stop it.” There was a shrillness running through his voice like a wire. I’d pushed him past where he knew how to go. I’d made him look at the world he didn’t want to see. If I stayed, I’d keep pushing until he broke. I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.
“Okay,” I said and pushed myself back from the table. “That’s all. I’m done here.”
Jay looked up at me. His lips were thin and bloodless. “Did you get anything that’s going to help us?”
“I don’t know,” I said, because Probably not seemed too rude. I’d come wanting my father to explain it all, and the truth was he barely knew more than I did. But he’d told me enough. It wasn’t about Coin or Rhodes or what had happened to Carla. It didn’t give me any insight into the political struggles of spiritual parasites trapped in the Pleroma. But it did give me something, and I could feel my mind shifting under the burden of the new information. From the time I’d walked into the apartment and the dead man on the bed had opened his eyes and started cooking, I’d been making assumptions.
No, since before that.
I felt things I thought I knew melting away, and as bleak as the truth was, it was better than the lies. I closed the family Bible, the leather covers enfolding the names of all the people who’d come before me. Burying them, and me with them. Putting it all in the past.
“Thank you, Dad,” I said. “For this, and really for all of it. I didn’t understand what you were doing, and if I had, I probably still would have taken off. But I know it was what you could do, and I appreciate it.”
“You’re like he was,” Dad said. “You’re lost to Satan.”
I almost laughed.
“All right, guys,” I said. “Let’s go.”
chapter thirteen
Darkness had taken the streets. I didn’t have the luxury of my sunglasses to hide behind. All the wounds were going to be clear on my face, and I was just going to have to be okay with that. I sat forward in the driver’s seat with Jay’s headlights behind me. My mind felt like the thinnest part of a whirlpool, spinning too fast and drawn too far down.
“What’s the plan, then?” Ex asked. It was a good question. I ignored it.
“You know what doesn’t make sense?” I said. “Having a massive international empire and then leaving it to someone lock, stock, and barrel without bothering to tell them about it.”
Ahead of us, a police car flew through an intersection, lights flaring on its roof, but without a siren to announce it. My knuckles ached on the wheel. I was hungry, and I needed to pee. Not the kinds of things that were supposed to bother an international demon hunter. I wished that I’d thought to hit the bathroom before we left the house, though.
“Eric’s story is much like your own,” Chogyi Jake said. “Taken under the wing of an older relative. And I have to think the miracles your father talked about were the work of a rider.”
“So there’s two points,” I said. “Inherits fortune from uncle and has a rider on board either pretty young or since, you know, conception. Think that’s enough to define a line for us?”
“Let’s look at the differences too,” Ex said. “He didn’t keep his. Michael spirited him away and brought him back empty. No more miracles.”
“But depression. A sense of loss,” Chogyi Jake said. “Qliphothic.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ve heard the term before. Remind me.”
“Shells,” Ex said. “Some riders, once they’ve been in a body, the person’s not there anymore. Or they’re there in some diminished way. There was one guy in San Diego, the rider was a jé-rouge, and when we got it out of him, he wasn’t there. His soul was eaten or transferred to some animal we never found. Lost, anyway. That was an extreme case.”
“It’s always like that to some extent, though,” Chogyi Jake said. I got to West Kellogg and turned right. The streetlights glowed around us, drowning out the stars. “Anyone who has had a rider becomes more vulnerable to other possession later.”
“The filth-lickers hanging out around exorcists and going for the easy prey,” I said.
“Exactly,” Ex said. “So when Michael got the rider out of young Eric, it left him pretty bad off. And then he toddled off to wherever and left Eric hanging open.”
For a moment I saw my mother’s expression again and shuddered. An emptied shell, left on the beach for any crab in need of a place to pick up and use. I wondered what it would feel like, being alone in my own body. It had never been that way for me. I had nothing to compare it to. Only the people I’d known who’d been through it. In New Orleans, Karen Black had collapsed when her rider was cast out, but Joseph Mfume had carried the same beast, and he’d been able to make himself whole. Mostly. Except that he loved the killer after it left him. Longed for it and the sense of peace that it brought him.
No one touched by riders was whole afterward. Even the people who found a way to live with them—a balance that brought rider and horse into a kind of partnership—paid a price for
it. You will outgrow me, so we should be ready. The phrase had come up in conversation recently, but I couldn’t remember where. It seemed important at the time—
“You’re speeding,” Chogyi Jake said.
“Thanks,” I said, and let up on the gas. We were almost at the Walmart. The lights in the parking lot rose up higher than the street lamps. Fake holly hung and bright red bells hung from them. I was surprised to see so many people there so long after dark, and then I checked the time. Five thirty. Most folks weren’t even home for dinner yet.
“So Eric had some kind of use for someone who’d been emptied.”
“No,” Ex said. “Just the opposite. Michael had some reason for casting the rider out of Eric, but we don’t know what that was. And Eric didn’t do that to you.”
I hit the signal and slowed, preparing to turn into the parking lot. Behind me, Jay’s blinker started going too. I turned.
“He could have been aiming for it, though,” I said. “The haugsvarmr under Grace Memorial? It could have kicked the Black Sun out of me. It would have, if it had had little more of a chance. Only it couldn’t see me, because . . .”
Because whatever weird thing made me hard to see with magic had left the massive rider blind to me.
“And what would the point be of making qliphoth?” Ex asked. “Why’d Michael do it? Why would Eric do it? What is there to gain from it?”
It didn’t hang together. Not yet. But I was closer than I had been. I was sure of that. There were still pieces missing. Like why the people who’d killed Eric were spiriting away my brother’s pregnant fiancée.
One thing at a time, I told myself. We’ll get there if we just take one thing at a time.
It took me a couple passes to find two parking spaces next to each other, but I managed it. Jay pulled in beside us and killed his engine. He was out of his car before my feet hit the pavement.
“What is this?” he demanded, waving a hand toward the store. “I thought we were going to find Carla!”
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